iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

It’s World AIDS Day today! Take some time to learn about HIV. CATIE’s website at catie.ca is a good place to start. These images are from the HIV memorial at 590 Church Street in Toronto that I visited last April. Names of people lost to HIV are still added to it every year. #WorldAIDSDay2025, #HIV

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Thank you taleofthemanticore.bluesky.social for the shoutout on your podcast today! I appreciate the kind words about my Hardy boys Mysteries RPG! Here is my sketch Jon said he used to inspire part of the adventure he is playing through on the podcast a few episodes back.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

What do you do with the iron-on/sew-on ttRPG patches? #ttRPG, #allthingsttRPG, #MothershipRPG, #RPG

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

I’m listening to the Monsters and Treasure podcast on my way to CleriCon. The topic is mapping and I realize I didn’t bring any graph paper!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

I’m doing another playtest for my new adventure for my Hardy Boys Mysteries RPG! I have to make sure the bugs are worked out before I run it at CleriCon! #ttRPG, #nonDnDRPG, #PbtA,#RPG

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

Using some hotel time to work on my latest adventure for my Hardy Boys Mysteries RPG! There are more books in the public domain this year! That means more material to inspire! #ttRPG #AllThingsTTRPG #PbtA #HardyBoys

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

At the Roger’s Centre watching the stadium fill up for the Blue Jays! Game one of three! Let’s GO!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Hey @taleofthemanticore.bsky.social ! How many Shrink spells does it take to turn a giant troll into a normal troll?

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

With all the AI stuff out there I find people are responding more to raw art. Why not gamble on yourself? You said you are having trouble with the digital tools, right? You could do your art in meatspace and scan it. The creator of my favourite zines does it that way.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Don’t shelve it! Get it out there and do better next time! There’s a good chance you are being too hard on yourself anyway.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

That ten-sided looks like it came from the Top Secret S/I box! I’m aware of how crazy this statement is.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Songbirds 3e has a section of the character generation where the player draws tarot cards for different life stages. It grounds the character with a background that creates their development and informs their approach to situations in the game.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

The random elements created by the #CloudEmpress #SoloProtocol with PC Approaches and NPC Moods, mixed with the 2d10 Oracle I made are taking the game into surprising directions!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

I’m jumping into #SoloRPG play with #CloudEmpress and the personalities I rolled for my party are a little volatile. 😁

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

I’m on the wrong side of 50 for fancy dice. 😉

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

You can find detailed info about it as well as download free PDFs of the rulebook and an intro adventure at cloudempress.com

cloudempress.com

CLOUD EMPRESS

Ecological Science Fantasy Roleplaying

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

It’s like a cross between Studio Ghibli’s Nausicaa and Frank Herbert’s Dune using the Mothership 1e system.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

I purchased Daggerheart this past weekend and it looks like fun! I’m looking forward to trying it out!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

At the moment my big three are: -B/X(ish) D&D -Cloud Empress -my Hardy Boys Mysteries RPG playtest

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

I like my dice plain with an easy-to-read typeface for the numbers and high contrast between the colours. I like my math rocks to be pretty but my top priority is being able to READ them. 😁

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

The PDFs are available on itch-dot-io if you want to read them on screen while waiting for the 2e version to come out. I printed them out as booklets on a colour laser printer locally and they look amazing.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

I’ll be running Cloud Empress and my own Hardy Boys Mysteries RPG! Tables are filling up already!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

Registration for #CleriCon2025 is open! It’s a wonderful little old school RPG Con in Glen Williams Ontario, hosted by The Dungeon Minister of YouTube fame!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

I love the character growth in this one! I also can’t wait to find out what good comes out of those choices!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

This sounds like Luka Rejec’s Ultra Violet Grasslands. The cat class with pet humans, the mix of low and high tech, weird pilgrims, all on a psychedelic landscape? A combination like that seems like an odd coincidence.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

I found some new folks with great ideas here on Bluesky. I haven’t given up on the other platforms just yet, but I feel like I could.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

You needed them because you could not bring a spell book into the dungeon. So you only had the spells you memorized before you left.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Most games I played in were comic book fight scenes and investigations into villainous plots. I wonder how many people dug into the mechanics that supported the broader stories?

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

It wasn’t played that way at a lot of tables though. People tended to focus on the parts of comic books they liked, and that was not often the struggle to maintain a life along side their hero responsibilities.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

The first game from TSR to have strong narrative elements was the FASERIP Marvel Super Heroes from 1983. The easiest way for a character to get Karma (XP/bennies) was to engage in narrative play like going on dates, making good on a mundane commitment, etc.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Mechanically it was decades ahead of its time!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Most narrative games follow the groundwork laid by the Rocky and Bullwinkle Role-Playing Party Game.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Is this the one written by Zeb Cook in the 1980s?

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Yeah, levels one to four are the characters’ backstory. I like a couple of sentences of what connects the character to one or two others in the group and that’s it.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Right? Someone must have ruined it by explaining the satire to him.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

You could check out the Tale of the Manticore solo play podcast.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Not having a childhood is going to separate them from other species. I wonder how it affects their emotional development and empathy? It could go any way!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Fabricant is a great origin! I love it!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Yes? I have rarely taken a character past seventh level. A couple characters made it to eighth, one made it to 11th, another made it to 15th, and I think my Adventure League 5e Character made it to 20th level. I find the sweet spot for D&D play is levels five to eight. After that it gets silly.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

I think it’s a holdover from the days of always having a week of downtime between sessions because the days people were not playing in between sessions still counted. Slow healing was the same. No one does it that way now so it doesn’t make sense.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

That rule was crazy! I don’t know why this is ascribed to the OSR. Most OSR games are based on the Moldvay/Cook B/X D&D which allowed for memorization of all spells inside one hour.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

That sucks! I hate that Yohai was pushed out for not jumping on the bandwagon without proof. Also, now I need to look into Ben Milton? Jebus!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

There’s a location with a time loop in the Dragonbane RPG boxed set. It’s an interesting take on the Groundhog Day concept.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

I love this concept! What a great name too! It suggests melancholy, but is intriguing!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

That is SO MUCH better than a bag of devouring! Something in there is nibbling away at the contents for sustenance but also kind of bored. It’s curious about our world but can’t enter it. It interacts in the middle space that is the bag! I’m stealing this!!!

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

I had the mini made from this cover, but I lost part of it in a move. I found the bridge recently while cleaning out some old storage.

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Dave Rolls @dave-stuff.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

I played a dog in a Con game that ended up grabbing the maguffin and running it back to town! The dog had WAY more hp than the other characters!

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